Reuniting 47 Illustrations from an Unpublished Manuscript

An Illustrated Dutch Translation of Virgil’s Aeneid by Sebastiaen Vrancx

The Frick Photoarchive’s inaugural online exhibition reunites all of the known drawings Sebastiaen Vrancx created to illustrate his own Dutch translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. In 1990, the journal Master Drawingsfirst published and attributed the series to Vrancx, but because of space limitations, only ten of the drawings were illustrated. A more recent addendum to that article in the same journal appeared in 2013, with just five illustrations. This online exhibition shows all forty-seven images to the public for the first time.

Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573–1647) was a Flemish artist known as an innovative painter of battle scenes and village plunderings. Born in Antwerp, he made a formative trip to Italy at the end of the sixteenth century, where his intellect and artistic talent were stimulated by his exposure to the treasures of Rome. Upon his return to his hometown, Vrancx became an active member and eventually the dean of the “Romanists,” a religious Brotherhood whose prerequisites for membership included visits to the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. Not surprisingly, given his interest in battle scenes, Vrancx was also a member of Antwerp’s citizens’ guard and fencers’ guild.

Vrancx's interest in the Aeneid must have stemmed not only from his love of Rome but also from his knowledge and love of literature. In addition to the societies mentioned above, Vrancx played a leading role in De Violieren, one of Antwerp's Chambers of Rhetoric, and apparently wrote many poems and at least fourteen plays. With his fellow Rhetoricians, he would have been aware of the latest Netherlandish illustrations and translations of importance, including Karel Van Mander's Ecologues and Georgics (1597) and his Iliad (1611), and Crispin van de Passe's Aeneid edition, the Speculorum Aeneidis Virgilianae (1612). It is possible that these translations inspired Vrancx and the Antwerp Chamber to attempt their own version of the Aeneid.

Although it appears that Vrancx’s Aeneid was intended for publication, no prints or illustrated books of the series have been found. What do remain are at least sixty-six of the original illustrations, seven of which are accompanied by a rhymed paraphrasing of the pertinent lines from the Aeneid. Several factors suggest that each illustration was originally joined with text, and that the series was meant to be printed as a book. First, the surviving examples of text are specific to their respective illustrations. Second, a number of the excerpts end with commas, indicating that the text continued onto a subsequent page. Further, all of the figures holding swords carry them in their left hands, with their shields and scabbards depicted on their right sides. Since this is the reverse of what one would expect (and a military aficionado such as Vrancx would never have made such an error), the implication is that prints were planned in reverse of the images. The alternative — tapestries — seems most unlikely because of the sheer number of illustrations (there were possibly as many as eighty-four originally) and the inclusion of the text. The lack of text on the other sheets could be attributed to the skillful manipulation of a pair of scissors.

What remains of the text does not correspond to any known published Dutch translation of the Aeneid from the early seventeenth century. Cornelis van de Ghistele's edition (published in 1556, 1583, 1596, and 1609) and Joost van den Vondel's edition (1646) are line-by-line translations of the epic, not the rhymed paraphrases that appear here.

Neither were the paraphrases adapted from numerous contemporary French or Italian versions of the text consulted. The extant text appears instead to be a new attempt at a Dutch translation of the epic, most likely by Vrancx himself. The ink of the text matches the ink of the drawings. Had the series been published, it would have been the most extensive and innovative pictorial cycle of the epic since Sebastian Brant's 1502 edition, which had 137 images and was highly popular, influencing virtually every published or painted illustration of Virgil's works for the next half century. Vrancx’s attempt at a new series, apparently uninfluenced by Brant’s, was therefore a bold proposition, and would have made a unique pictorial contribution.

Thanks are due Stijn Alsteens and Esmée Quodbach for their help transliterating and translating the original text. Most thanks, however, are due to Professor Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, who suggested the project originally and collected the majority of the images.